Still beating.

Month

January 2012

I am of the opinion that the English language is pretty neato and fun, but I suppose people make that same claim for just about every language. And why shouldn’t they? Language is pretty neato and fun.

Let’s talk about “The Ghost,” because there’s a history to the song that is perhaps more interesting than the song itself.

In the fall of 2005, I lived in Nagoya, Japan as a student at Nanzan University. It was a brief stint, but the densest four-and-a-half months of my life. It seemed that nearly everything I did, I was doing for the first time. Among these firsts was the first time I’d ever set out on a lonely walk and returned home less lonely. I made lifelong friends at a tiny and dim but loud bar, the Rosetta Stone, home to men’s men, honky-tonk women, rock ‘n roll, and a great many Western spirits, all juxtaposed by the enormous cemetery across the street, which was itself home to a great many Eastern spirits.

So I’ve gone and populated this bad-boy with the most relevant and-or resilient of my postings from former venue LiveJournal. You will find that this had made this blog something of a mess, since I have yet to add in “More” tags to each post, and there are probably some weird formatting problems. But at least there’s content! Go ahead, take a gander. Put your Saturday to good use.

Those who have even a casual acquaintanceship with me will have probably gathered by now that I’m a pretty sentimental chap, what with all the mementos strewn about my cubicle and songs about shit-that-used-to-suck-but-that-has-appreciated-in-value-over-time. My friends’ wedding (I’m proud and delighted to say that both the bride and groom are friends) last October spurred a nostalgia kick so swift that it sent me hurtling through a binge of Wonder Years episodes and old LiveJournal entries. Yes, I daresay I read through each and every entry I’d written between the summer of 2003 and present day.

What I discovered was a very clear and perhaps abrupt transition from emotive, spontaneous “brain spewing” to topical essays on language and culture. I blame the placidity and mundanity of my past relationship combined with my frustration whilst living in rural Japan combined with my boredom whilst sitting on long-ass train rides to Kani.

That was all well and good. The topical entries showed a narrowing of focus and probably served as more worthwhile reading material. But. . . what of those old, undistilled entries that immortalized my feelings at given moments, that served as historical records in a pure form? I realized this past fall that, while many of those old entries were embarrassingly revealing, they were invaluable windows into my own past by that same token.

With my migration to this new venue, I would like to make a habit of being less necessarily topical, and occasionally just talk about stuff that I’ve been doing, things I’ve been feeling.

Welp, it’s been in the mental works for some time now, but I’m finally getting my act together and migrating to WordPress as my creative venue of choice. Consider it a rebirth, of sorts. Hence, pictures of baby primates!!!

Ladies and gentlemen, the slow loris.

‘Course, I’ll probably be populating this thing with a bunch of old content for starters, so maybe it’s not so much a rebirth as, uh, a change of venue. But nevertheless, BABY PRIMATES!!!

The alleged existence of the baby sloth is thought to be some kind of ongoing Andy Kaufman joke. I mean come on.

Anyway, some fun facts about this blog:

-I seriously considered naming it “The Moore You Know,” a puntacular title coined by My Oldest Friend and The Funniest Guy I Know John, the guy also behind the equally puntacular net handle that I use at work. But ultimately I decided against it because I feel like if I don’t start cutting down on my pun usage I’m somehow going to regain my virginity. Also because that title would assume the reader knows me (me being the “Moore” in question), and while in theory you will be getting to know me by reading this blog even if you didn’t know me from real life already, it’s sure not going to turn a lot of random heads from beyond the cyber-ether. Not sure “The Hammering Heart” will either, but at least it’s got heart. Aha.